Climate Change. 2018-NOV:Part 30.
Hope for people with no access
to clean water.
Trump Admin.
releases major report.
Reactions.

Sponsored link:

MOF Technology: Hope for people who have no access
to clean water.

About one in three humans on Earth does not have access to clean safe drinking water. A new technology is being developed that might literally be a lifesaver.

"MOF" is an acronym for Metal-Organic Frameworks. According to Scientific American Custom Media:

"MOFs work thanks to their distinctive structure — a profusion of nanometer-sized internal spaces. In fact, a MOF the size of a sugar cube has so many pores that were they to be smoothed out they would cover an area as large as six football fields. MOFs are also extremely stable, light and versatile: their molecular anatomy can be varied to attract specific molecules, such as water, and their pores can be designed to best store them. Adding a small amount of heat or pressure causes the MOF to release what it’s holding. More than 70,000 different MOFs have been produced to date for various applications." 1

Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley used MOF Technology to develop a water harvester that collects drinkable water from the atmosphere. The Scientific American article gives one example of how a harvester could be used to provide water in the Arizona desert. It only has about 10% humidity in the daytime, but rises to 40% at night. The harvester is a device about the size of a small microwave oven, apparently without an external power source or moving parts. It contains some MOF powder which absorbs water from the air during the night. When daytime arrives, the heat of the sun releases about a third of a cup of water. Yaghi said:

"With further improvements, a device the size of a washing machine could produce enough water for the basic needs of a household. ... We’re looking forward to testing out the next water-harvester prototype in California’s Death Valley."

MOFs can also be designed to remove specific gasses from the air, like Carbon Dioxide -- the greenhouse gas that contributes most to global warming.

QYResearch estimates that the MOF market will increase from $70 million in 2017 to $750 million in 2025. 1

2018-NOV-23: The Trump Administration released a report on the impacts of climate change:

Congress has mandated that a National Climate Assessment report be issued every four years that describes the impacts that climate change are having, and are expected to have, on the U.S. The latest report is 1,600 pages long! Titled the "National Climate Assessment," it was prepared by hundreds of climate scientists from 13 U.S. federal agencies. It was released on "Black Friday," when most people were otherwise distracted.

Dino Grandoni, writing for the Washington Post, said:

"The Trump administration did something over the long holiday weekend it has rarely done for most of the president's tenure. It actually acknowledged global climate change is real and its effects on the United States both now and in the future are dire. Major news organizations still featured the report prominently in print and over the airwaves, even days after its publication. If anything, dropping the report on Black Friday just gave Democrats another point of criticism of the administration and generated even more headlines.

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) released a statement saying:

"The Trump administration may want to bury this report so that it doesn’t get attention, but we can’t bury our heads in the sand to the threat of climate change."

Webmaster's comment:

Senator Markey is wrong. We can bury our heads in the sand over climate change. That is what President Trump and his administration is doing right now. Of course, if this continues, the world-wide results will be catastrophic and billions of people will suffer.

The Portland Press Herald newspaper had eye-catching headlines:

"U.S. 1.8 degrees warmer than it was 10 years ago.

2.3 additional degrees of warming possible by 2050.

U.S. may lose $155 billion in labor productivity by 2090.

"Climate Change's Grip Intensifying'." 2

Carolyn Gramling and Laurel Hamers, writing for Science News, said:

"The United States is poised to take a powerful economic hit from climate change over the next century. Heat waves, wildfires, extreme weather events and rising sea levels could cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars [each year] in lost labor, reduced crop yields, health problems and crumbling infrastructure."

The report noted that 2017 was the country’s second-hottest year in history. Last year, the U.S. spent a record $306 billion on climate-related disasters.

Nationally, by the year 2100, if the U.S. continues its "business-as-usual" level of emissions, yearly losses, in 2015 dollars, would be:

141 billion due to heat related deaths.

118 billion due to costal property losses.

155 billion in lost wages in outdoor industries due to heat waves.

26 billion due to deaths caused by bad air quality.

Webmaster's comment:

I find it fascinating that the report measures the effect of people's deaths in dollars rather than the number of dead bodies scattered around the landscape.

The report found that the main impact of climate change would impact different areas of the U.S. in different ways:

Northeastern states: Increased death rates due to degenerating air quality and temperature extremes.

On NOV-27, President Trump said that he had read "some of" the report. He said that "It's fine." However, commenting on the report's estimates of ecomonic losses, he added: "I don't believe it."

Four days after this report, on NOV-27, the United Nations Environment Program released a separate report saying that global emissions of carbon dioxide -- a major cause of global warming -- rose for the first time in three years.

Webmaster's comment:

You might wish to consider assessing the adequacy of your house/apartment insurance -- particularly if you live anywhere near an ocean or a large bunch of trees.

2018-NOV-23: The New Republic challenges the media about their coverage of Climate Change:

Emily Atkin, writing for the New Republic magazine, said that the Government's National Climate Assessment report:

"... got significant airtime on the prime-time cable news programs ... That’s the good news. The bad news is that, during that airtime, non-experts made numerous false and misleading statements about the climate report and the scientists who wrote it. Those statements went largely unchallenged by the journalists in charge of gatekeeping the conversations." 3

Atkin discussed two of the most common comments on climate change by conservative sources :

A claim by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) on CNN's State of the Union TV program. Ernst recited the common Republican belief that:

"We know that our climate is changing. Our climate always changes, and we see those ebb and flows through time."

Atkin countered this statement by writing:

"... the earth’s climate as a whole has been stable for the last 12,000 years. Now, all of a sudden, it’s warming more quickly than any time in the last 66 million years. ... Why didn’t the show’s host, Dana Bash, ask her?"

A statement by Danielle Pletka’s on NBC's Meet the Press TV program. Pletka is an expert at the American Enterprise Institute. She admitted not being a specialist on global warming, but did note that:

"We just had two of the coldest years, biggest drop in global temperatures that we’ve had since the 1980s, the biggest in the last 100 years. We don’t talk about that, because it’s not part of the agenda."3

This is an excellent example of how to squeeze a lie out of scientific results. More details.

Atkin also criticized the media's handling of a common Republican claim, that scientists climate reports are a fraud. She cites former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) who claimed:

"Look, if there was no climate change, we’d have a lot of scientists looking for work. The reality is that a lot of these scientists are driven by the money that they receive." 3

Part 25:2018-JUN & JUL: During 2018-JUN: A very few encouraging signs. Hurricanes slowing as winds increase. Changes in Antarctic ice and environment. Norway's growing season increased. A new world highest temperature. Future ocean levels.

Part 26:2018-JUL: New York City reports to the UN. Impacts of
humans burning up all our fossil energy. WWW.CLIMATECENTRAL.ORG's tools.
Death Valley, CA, sets new record. Dissapearing wetlands in Louisiana. Climate change affecting Northern lands. Hurricane Florence.

Part 28: 2018-SEP & OCT: Trump Admin. predicts: 7ºF temperature
rise by the year 2099. Impact of climate change on women.Green Building Week & commitment. New IPCC report predicts a "Strong Risk of
Crisis
as early as 2040.